I was shocked to find out on the 97th birthday of Kenneth Kaunda - Zambia's first president and a giant in the fight against colonialism - that some people had never heard of him.
I had posted my birthday greeting to the nonagenarian on social media on 28 April with the tag line: "The only African independence leader from the 1960s still alive."
Many celebrated. Other were astonished, saying: "I didn't realise he was still alive."
But to be honest, those under the age of the 30 were clueless.
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image captionKenneth Kaunda (R), seen here with a Zimbabwean struggle leader Joshua Nkomo (L), was at the forefront of calls for independence
For someone who grew up in the 1960s in Sierra Leone, this was difficult to fathom.
I was part of a special generation of Africans observing the emergence of colonial states on the continent into independent nations.
UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, fresh from visiting several British African colonies, had delivered his now-famous "Wind of Change" speech in Cape Town to South Africa's all-white parliament on 3 February 1960.
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